IntroductionIn this small tutorial, I will present you how to compile the game from sources. I will use the latest long term support distribution for Ubuntu (12.04 LTS x86_64), but 90% of the tutorial could be applied to other distributions.

Content

Why

Getting the tools

Getting the code

Compilation

Update

Troubles

WhyThere are few reasons that may motivate you from compiling SG from source:

It will compile the game. If you have a multi core machine, you can use the -j<cores> option to compile faster. For example, if you have a quad core machine, just run "make -j4". If you have a machine that can run both 32 and 64 bits softwares, you also may be able to compile for the i386 platform with "setarch i386 make". The new binaries will be now in a sub-folder named build/release-linux-x86_64/ (x86_64 could be i386 or just x86 depending of the git revision and your machine). We just need to move now those compiled files to our existing game installation.

It will update the code, you will be notified if something changed since last download.If something actually changed, you just need then to redo the compilation process and you will be ready to test again.

Troubles

If it doesn't compile for some reason when you just updated the code, try to remove the build folder and try to compile again. If it doesn't make the trick, contact the developers via the forum.

If you spot any bug while testing, just contact the developers via the forum or make a bug report (you will still need a forum account to log in here, in small caps).

If you want to play with the sources, I suggest you to learn git (especially the checkout command), there are plenty of tutorials around.

For some other problems, don't be scared to contact any developer or me (#smokinguns on freenode, this forum, email, etc.)

"Chuck Norris had to shorten his beard in the presence of Richard Stallman because two beards that awesome, so close would segfault the universe (again)."